


how vulnerable you are

by CrystallineInk



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Cannoli Kylux, M/M, Post-Canon, Self-Indulgent, Tumblr Prompt, kinda fluffy but also not really?, post-TFA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-02
Updated: 2016-07-02
Packaged: 2018-07-19 13:19:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,132
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7362907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CrystallineInk/pseuds/CrystallineInk
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You look horrendous, Ren,” Hux said simply, looking down his nose at the battered form of the knight from the foot of his bed.</p>
            </blockquote>





	how vulnerable you are

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kaikamahine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaikamahine/gifts).



> So this is a fill for an ask I got about a month and a half ago from a drabble meme and it got a little out of hand. I'm sure no one minds.
> 
> For the prompt: Things you said after it was over.
> 
> Not beta'd, not overly edited, all mistakes are mine, etc., etc.

Kylo Ren kept fading in and out of consciousness, only registering the contrasting cold of the wet snow slowly seeping into his robes and the thick, warm blood steadily oozing from the wound in his side. He lay defeated, abandoning the thought of getting up. The planet beneath him shuddered, the quakes becoming more and more frequent. This is how he would die—broken, disgraced, humiliated. His vision narrowed as he stared up at the bare canopy, feeling his mind begin to slip again.

The last thing he heard before his vision went black were voices, just barely audible over the rumble of the ground: “He's over here, sir!”

 

* * *

 

The gentle whir of equipment and beeps of a medical droid stirred Ren from unconsciousness. His limbs felt heavy, his body stiff, his mind hazy. The sterile scent of the med bay was pungent in his nostrils as he pulled himself further into alertness. He squinted under the bright, unforgiving light of the room.  _ How— _

“You look horrendous, Ren,” Hux said simply, looking down his nose at the battered form of the knight from the foot of his bed.

_ Oh.  _ Sighing through his nose, he blinked a few times to adjust his eyes to the light. Moving to sit up, shooting pain ran through his side, causing him to groan quietly as his face scrunched with strain. Not only that, but his shoulders also seemed to not want to cooperate. The droid beside him beeped in warning for him to lay still. Never one to listen, Ren ignored the droid and made a second attempt, hissing sharply as he bore the pain through his body.

He brought his right hand up to his face, ignoring the way his shoulder twinged and was surprised to feel the dull scrape of a long, jagged wound. The wound that the scavenger had given him on Starkiller.  _ Fuck _ . Ren focused his vision from the thin bedsheets covering his lower half to meet the gaze of Hux before him. A dry, humourless chuckle escaped his throat as he took in the appearance of the other. “You're one to talk, General,” Ren's voice rasped with disuse, his mouth unbearably dry.

Hux's face was unshaven, his skin much paler than usual, perhaps because of the dark circles under his eyes. The overall effect of his appearance gave the typically strict and orderly man a rough, disheveled look.

The droid at his side continued to beep at its patient as it tried to convince him to lie back down. Annoyed now at the constant high-pitched sound, Ren finally removed his hand from his face and flung it outward, throwing the droid against the wall forcefully and causing sparks to fly from the crumpled metal.

Hux's lips pursed together as he watched Ren's display before he sighed lightly through his nose and looked back at him. “Do you really have to destroy everything on my ship?” he asked.

“Did you  _ need _ something?” Ren shot back, ignoring his question.

An incredulous look flashed over Hux's face as if he was about to press the matter, but decided to drop it. “I do, in fact. Supreme Leader tasked me with your retrieval from the forest just outside of Sector 47.” He paused, almost daring Ren to interrupt him. When he was sure that he would be allowed to continue without any snark from the other, he unlocked his datapad and brought up a note he wrote to himself.

“Before you passed out from blood loss, you were mumbling something about the scavenger girl, about how she managed to best you,” he said with a clipped, clinical tone, then stared at Ren directly. “Neither I nor any of the scouting team accompanying me were able to discern exactly what you said. Supreme Leader wants to know exactly how you failed.”

Ren visibly winced at the sharp word on Hux's tongue and broke eye contact. Failure. Hearing that from another was worse than the flagellation he dealt to himself as he lay in the snow. He closed his eyes as he recalled their fight, angry at himself for being so sure of a quick victory over the scavenger and the traitor.

Several moments passed between the two before Hux straightened up even further, his chin somehow even higher than before as he continued to stare down at Ren. “I have other duties to attend to on my ship; I want an answer,” he hissed.

“Fuck off back to the bridge, then. I'll face Supreme Leader and tell him myself,” he snapped back, the air in the room suddenly filled with electric malice.

Only the soft beeping of the machine taking Ren's vitals could be heard in the room while they stared each other down. Hux struggled to suppress the urge to lunge across the hospital bed and strangle the life out of the nuisance aboard his ship himself. He closed his eyes and took a deep, steadying breath to bring himself back under control. Once he calmed himself enough to stop himself from committing manslaughter, he opened his eyes again and continued to stare down Ren. “Snoke tasked me to record your testimony of the events that happened on Starkiller as soon as you woke up.”

“So?”

“ _ So _ , you insolent child, just tell me what the hell happened so I can get back to my command and carry on with my life, if you please.”

Ren huffed, glaring at Hux before easing himself back down onto the bed. He reasoned that Hux would be sure to hear about his defeat sooner or later; he may as well tell him everything. Another sigh left his nose as he stared up at the ceiling of the med bay. “Fine.”

Hux nodded curtly and moved to sit in the chair on Ren's left, hooking one leg over the other and setting his datapad on his lap. He brought up an audio recorder and opened a new note before looking at the knight expectantly.

“I...” Ren began, then cut himself off. He turned to look at Hux, knitting his eyebrows together. “Where do you want me to start?”

“Supreme Leader wants you to start from his order to fetch the girl.”

His frown deepened. “Why? You know what happened just after that, why don't you tell him that yourself?”

“Of course I know, Ren, you destroyed that entire interrogation chamber before you stomped off to fuck knows where.”

“Then why do I have to tell you what you already know?”

Hux pinched the bridge of his nose, irritation bubbling underneath his skin. “Fine. Tell me what happened after you put the base on lockdown, then.”

Ren turned his attention back up to the ceiling and began recounting the events on Starkiller. He told Hux of how he sensed Han Solo on the planet, how he tracked down the  _ Falcon _ , followed the trail to the reactor core, confronted Solo, and ran him through on his lightsaber. He hesitated, letting his eyes slide shut as he recalled the look of surprise, followed quickly by acceptance, on his fath—on Solo's face. The same uneasy feeling that he felt on the walkway over the core came back to him, like he was going to dry heave with disgust. Surely it was the right thing to do. Snoke had told him that killing him was supposed to make him stronger, to make him unstoppable, to cement him completely in the Dark and set him on the path to become as great as Darth Vader.

The general watched Ren's face contort and noted the conflict in his face during his pause. He allowed for a few seconds of silence while he waited for him to regain himself and continue, but Ren did not offer any more. Hux shifted the datapad on his lap and tapped his finger against the side.

“Surely that's not everything. You were found in the forest just outside of the reactor.”

Another pause, then: “I was ambushed. Shot by a blaster. I spotted the girl and the traitor just before the side of the reactor blew up. They must have seen what I'd done to Solo and retaliated.”

“I fail to see how you so easily sensed Solo stepping onto my base but noticed neither the scavenger nor FN-2187 when they were practically standing in front of you.”

Ren shot another glare at Hux, pushing him back a few inches out of anger. “Do you want me to tell you what happened or not?”

“Continue,” he said, unfazed by the knight's outburst.

Ren continued to stare at Hux for a moment longer, then shifted subtly into a more comfortable position and let his eyes slide closed again. “FN-2187 had Skywalker's lightsaber.”

“How do you know it was Skywalker's specifically?”

Ignoring Hux's question, he continued: “He was able to wield it against me. After a short time, however, I bested him and he dropped the saber. I tried calling it towards me, but the girl....”

“Yes?”

A pause, then: “She was stronger with the Force. She picked it up and also turned it against me.” Ren sighed sharply and his face scrunched up into a scowl. “I don't understand how an untrained child could have possibly been able to do that.”

Hux let out a silent, humourless laugh through his nose.  _ Untrained child, indeed _ . He knew better than to actually voice this comment now that Ren was so easily spilling the details of the events into the open and waited for him to continue.

“I was angry. That saber belongs to me, not to her. I needed to take it back. So I engaged her in battle as well, fought harder than I had with the traitor. I pushed her back further into the forest. The ground behind her started falling away. And then I...I made a mistake.”

“And what was that?”

Ren's eyes opened and landed on Hux. The anger that had been in his eyes previously was replaced by regret. “I tried to spare the girl. She is strong with the Force, I could feel the power hidden away inside of her. She could have been of use to the Order. I offered to teach her, to show her the ways of the Force.” He exhaled through his nose and let his gaze drop to the floor.

“Suddenly she was stronger than before. She pushed back from the edge and took the offensive. It was all I could do to defend against her attacks. I underestimated her and paid the price for offering her mercy. I should have killed her when I had the chance.”

“That's when she defeated you, correct?”

Ren confirmed Hux's question with several minutes of silence.

When the quiet beeps of the machine measuring Ren's vitals became unbearably loud, Hux shifted again and crossed his other leg over the other. “Is that all?”

“...Yes.”

“Very well. I'll pass this information on to Supreme Leader,” Hux said. He began to tap at the screen of his datapad, saved the typed notes he'd made, and stopped the recording in order to send the files to a lower-ranking official for transcription.

To Ren's surprise, he made no effort to move from the chair, his fingers still flying over the screen of the device. He frowned deeper.

“I thought you had  _ other duties to attend to _ , General.”

Hux continued tapping on his datapad without looking anywhere near the direction of Ren. “I'll be damned, you  _ do _ know how to listen.”

Ren growled low in his throat. “Then why are you still here?”

Hux made a show of closing a few windows on his datapad before turning the screen off and setting it down on a nearby surface. “I’m still here to discuss personal matters with you.”

“Why?” he asked with trepidation, eyes flicking over to the device on the stand.

Noting his expression, Hux let out a sigh and minutely lowered his tone. “I’m not recording any of this. It’s between us only.”

Still suspicious, Ren shifted his gaze back to Hux. “What personal matters?”

The general folded his hands in his lap and took a light breath through his nose. “While you were unconscious, you seemed to be...present. Somehow.”

“Of course I was present. I’m aboard this ship, aren’t I?” Ren deadpanned.

Hux’s eyes flashed dangerously. “I see your terrible sense of humour is still in tact,” he snipped.

“Then get on with it.”

Hux pinched the bridge of his nose again, tamping down the urge to strangle Ren for the second time of their meeting. “I don’t know how your magic tricks work, nor do I particularly care about  _ why _ , but you seem to have somehow been projecting yourself on my bridge.”

Ren blinked at him, his face completely blank.

Hux inhaled slowly and let his hand fall back to his lap, contemplated his next words, then: “You’ve been haunting me for the last five days.”

Ren’s eyebrows scrunched together again. “How do you mean?”

“You’ve been following me everywhere. Like some kind of spectre or some other ridiculous shadow.” Not that he believed in those superstitions.

Ren stayed silent, waiting for him to get to the point.

“Are you aware you’ve been doing so?”

“No. I’ve been unconscious for five days.”

“Careful, Ren,” Hux warned at his sardonic tone.

“Then why are you telling me this?”

Hux folded his arms across his chest, uncrossed his legs, and leaned back slightly in the metal chair, showing obvious discomfort. “Because you’ve not only chosen to follow me. You’ve also been projecting thoughts into my head.”

Ren’s expression remained guarded. “I don’t see how that’s my problem.”

Hux continued, disregarding Ren’s comment. He’d already opened the door to this conversation; he might as well finish it as soon as possible. “It’s nothing but your problem, Ren. You’ve been forcing thoughts of  _ sentiment _ into my head.”

He finally seemed to have drawn out an actual response from Ren. The knight propped himself up on his elbow and turned his body to face him, wincing at the pressure on his side wound. “You’re lying.”

“Do I look like I’m lying? You’re the mind-reader, see for yourself.”

Ren narrowed his eyes and reached into Hux’s mind. He met the typical blockade that was normally there whenever he attempted to delve into his thoughts, though he was able to gain access to the thoughts in question without much effort, even in his weakened state. He saw quick flashes of some of his own fantasies: a tender embrace; hot breaths between them; a subtle brush of his hands on the other’s; quick, parting kisses before he was deployed on a mission; a galaxy under Hux’s rule with him by his side; a sense of fear that he’d never have what he wanted.

He’d seen enough. Ren pulled back, his eyes quickly flicking between Hux’s. He was desperate to find any tells of untruths in the flashes he’d just seen. After the initial shock wore off, he trained his face back into a scowl. “So,” he said shortly. “You’re going to use that as blackmail, I suppose?”

Hux’s expression remained blank, no tells written on his face. “Look again, if you like,” he said cooly.

“Why? I know what I saw.”

The general responded only with a shrug of his right shoulder.

Reluctantly, he took up his offer again. If nothing else, he could at least waste more of Hux’s time before he went off and desecrated his name. He was met with the same visions, only a bit more saturated with detail. Details that he’d not seen the first time around. In fact, they were details that he’d not even imagined in his own fantasies. Soft smiles behind closed doors. The scrape of teeth against his neck. A tightened, sleepy embrace shared under thin sheets in the middle of the night. A sense of desire, of want, of need. What _—_

Oh.  _ Oh. _

Ren came back to himself a bit slower this time. He frowned as he stared down Hux, his face still unreadable. The air in the room hung heavy with anticipation; Ren unwilling to break the silence, Hux waiting for his response.

The quiet battle of wills came to an end when Ren took a shaky breath to break the deafening stillness. “Is that what this is about?”

Hux rolled his eyes, leaned forward ever so slightly, and clasped his hands in his lap. “I always figured you were slow on the uptake,” he said with less malice than usual. “Yes, that is what this is about.”

Another lull passed between them before Ren’s impatience got the better of him. “What happens now, then?”

Hux heaved a sigh and looked down at his hands in his lap. “I see a few options. First, we can forget this ever happened and leave it in the past. I can move on with my command and you can move on with your witch hunt for Skywalker.”

Ren felt an unpleasant lurch in his chest and his expression soured. “I doubt either of us want to do that.”

Hux looked up briefly from his hands in a silent order to be quiet, then continued. “The next path I see is, at best, treasonous. If it fails, it could cost us both our heads.”

“What are you suggesting?” Ren asked, almost certain he could figure it out.

“Snoke would likely not approve of his apprentice fraternising with the general of his military. It could provide a conflict of interests that would not be in his favour. We’re en route to his planet as per his request for you to complete your training.” Hux inhaled slowly and straightened his back, squaring his shoulders. “I suggest that once you are finished with him, kill him.”

Ren’s eyes widened slightly. “I didn’t know you had the guts to suggest such a thing, General.”

The corner of his lips twitched slightly. “How else do you think I ascended the ranks so quickly?”

A matching expression found its way onto Ren’s face as he contemplated Hux’s suggestion. He gingerly lowered himself back onto the bed, his side protesting at the change in position. “I’ll consider your offer.”

“Good, that settles it.” Hux let out a soft groan as he stood from the hard metal chair and straightened out his uniform. He grabbed his datapad from the side table and gently brushed a loose strand of hair off of Ren’s brow. Boots clacking as he walked around the bed towards the door, he spoke again. “I’ll send in another medical droid and leave you to rest, Lord Ren. Please don’t destroy this one as well.” He threw another small smile in his direction before leaving the room, his brisk footfalls retreating from the med bay and back to the bridge of the  _ Finalizer. _

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not gonna lie, I kind of left this a little open-ended for any potential additions I might write for this. Thoughts, comments, and kudos are all appreciated!!
> 
> Come say hi to me on [tumblr](http://dwarvenstudmuffin.tumblr.com)!!


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